Archive for the ‘charlie blackmon’ tag

Stanton is your defending champ .. and one heck of a slugger. Photo unk via rantsports.com

I know some think the HR derby is a sham. However I like it, I love the new format (timed instead of by outs), and the results speak for themselves; by some accounts tickets for the HR derby are going for more money than the All Star Game itself. And this year seems rather compelling, with the defending champ and inarguable holder of the league’s current title of ‘Best slugger” in Giancarlo Stanton the #1 seed in his home town, set to hopefully face off against the #2 seed Aaron Judge, who is busy setting Statcast exit velocity speed records and running away with both the AL MVP and Rookie of the Year award (last time someone’s done that? Ichiro Suzuki in his “rookie” year in Seattle).

So we know they got Stanton and Judge right; who else is in this year’s tourney and who *should* have been there?

Justin Bour (shout out to the Westfields HS and George Mason alumni Bour! Also worth noting; he was a 25th round pick; bully for Bour to even be in the majors, let alone slugging his way onto the national stage)

On the plus side, great to see a quality start out of Jacob Turner. Good velocity (average of 95.8, peak of 97.6) even if most of the 96-97 heaters were early, decent strike ratio (59 of 84), not a ton of swing and miss (just 5 whiffs out of 84 pitches). But he walked nobody, got a K/inning, and kept his team in the game. And he was up 4-1 in the 6th before finally giving up a long ball (an inevitability in Denver). You can’t ask for much more from a spot starter.

Certainly better than what Jeremy Guthrie gave this team earlier this month

And once again I bring up the obvious; between Turner’s arm and stuff, and what Vance Worley is now doing for AAA New Orleans after his very serviceable 2016, what in the heck were the Nats thinking in giving Guthrie the first crack at spot starts for the big league team?

Enny Romero gave up the go-ahead homer to another top-notch slugger … but the nit is that as a lefty, he should have had the advantage against Charlie Blackmon. Instead Blackmon golfed one into the 2nd deck to put his team in the lead. Pitchers give up homers, sure. But Romero now has a 1.8 WHIP on the year. You just cannot have a middle reliever that puts on nearly 2 baserunners every time he gets the ball. I’m guessing Turner sticks around and Romero gets the DFA heave-ho once Strasburg catches up on his sleep and re-joins the team.

Meanwhile, is it obvious for me to say that of all the relievers in the bullpen, that Blake Treinen‘s stuff most poorly translates to the thin-air environment of Coors? Why would he be the choice out of the pen when his whole schtick is movement on his sinking fastball? Why was he left in a one run game and allowed to give up 6 hits and basically put the game completely out of reach? I guess you could excuse a couple of the hits (the Story single was a jam job that a better LF might have caught, Wolters RBI single was sharply hit but well placed past Rendon, who was playing up), but you can’t excuse 6 hits and 3 runs.

What’s the solution? Maybe you just say “oh its Coors.” Fine. But Treinen needs to find his way and fast. Our most effective reliever right now seems to be an NRI that we picked up off the street on Feb 1st (Matt Albers). That’s not a good thing … because its just a matter of time before he regresses to the mean as well. No wonder the Nats are “sniffing around” on bullpen help. Maybe something they should have done a better job at doing this past off-season.

I think Treinen might be one more blow-up from an option to AAA to clear his head. Keep Turner up; if he’s throwing 96-97 during starts, he’ll be fine in middle relief. DFA Romero and bring up Adams to see if his 2017 AAA numbers are legit. Can’t be any worse, right?

Altuve is my fantasy leader for the 2nd year running. Photo via mlblogs.com

Standard disclaimer; I do this post every year. If you don’t play fantasy, you probably won’t care about the 3,000+ words contained herein. You won’t hurt my feelings by not reading. I’ll include a jump so it doesn’t blow out your mobile reader. Back to our regularly scheduled programming next week with final roster analysis once the last bench spots are announced.

Ramos may be the toughest off-season decision the team makes. Photo via wp.com

Another year, another playoff failure. Beat it to death already. Time to move on.

Lets talk about the post-season “To Do” list is for the Nats. We’ll have eventual posts to talk about other stuff, like Tender decisions, 40-man decisions ahead of the Rule5 draft, etc.

In this post, we’ll squint at the overall roster, look at blatant holes that will need filling, and discuss how they might get filled. Call it the cliche’s “General Manager for a day” post for the Nats this coming off-season.

Pending Free Agents we are waving good-bye to and the holes they thus leave (as per the invaluable Cots site at BaseballProspectus):

Mark Melancon: though i’d love to re-sign him … see later in the post.

Wilson Ramos: his injury is a shame for both player and team; he likely lost $50M in guaranteed FA money and the team lost a clear QO-compensation pick. He may not even be able to catch again, which dumps him to the AL, where his market is significantly cut thanks to the lessening of demand for bat-only DH types. Ramos is in serious career jeopardy right now; would he decamp back to the Nats on some sort of minimally guaranteed deal with performance incentives?

Stephen Drew: also one I hope re-signs; see later in the post.

Chris Heisey: one who I think is replaceable; look for another cattle call for RH bat options this coming spring training.

Matt Belisle: despite not making the NLDS roster, he was great for Washington this year and is worth another contract.

Mark Rzepczynski: He’s been very effective for us, and overall had a good 2016. His 2015 was awful, but he was good before that. Such is the life of specialist relievers.

Sean Burnett and Mat Latos: both given Sept 2016 tryouts; neither seem likely to be retained.

Jonathan Papelbon: worth mentioning if only for the payroll flexibility.

Guys who I think are clear Non-Tenders (probably a topic worth its own post).

Yusmeiro Petit: $3M option with $500k buyout for 2017; pitched poorly in 2016, didn’t make the post-season roster and should be replaceable on the roster by any number of our AAA starters.

Ben Revere: $6.25M salary this year, due an arbitration raise for 2017; struggled badly in 2016, lost his job to a guy who had about 2 week of CF experience and didn’t make the post-season roster.

Aaron Barrett: as heartless as it would be; he’s arb-eligible, still hurt, not likely to be ready by opening day and is completely replaceable as a RH middle reliever).

Total savings from these non-tenders: roughly $10M

Guys who I think its Time to Trade and the holes they thus leave. This also may be worthy of its own whole post.

Gio Gonzalez: I think the Nats can take advantage of a historically weak FA market for starters and Gio’s very friendly contract (two $12M options for 2017 and 2018) and move him. Yes he struggled this year, but if you look at what middle rotation innings eaters like him are getting these days, $12M is a bargain and he should fetch something we value. Moving him lets some of the guys who are clearly biting on the heels of a deserved rotation spot earn it for 2017 and thus the Nats “save” $11.5M in salary for the 2017 roster.

Danny Espinosa: As much as I have argued against this, his 2017 playoff performance has solidified in my mind the need to move him. He has his pros (a plus defender range wise, perhaps the best SS arm in the game, and serious power for a SS) and his cons (he hit just .209 this year, he strikes out at about a 30% clip, and his switch hitting capabilities are really in question). Nonetheless, there has to be some demand for a 25-home run capable plus defender SS in a lineup that can afford one crummy batting average at the bottom of the order. Perhaps an AL team that doesn’t have to also bat a sub .200 BA pitcher.

Total savings from these guys getting moved (not counting payroll received in return of course): $15-$16M.

So, adding up all three lines, assuming a steady payroll ceiling similar to this year’s and not counting arbitration raises (or Strasburg‘s new contract), you’d have roughly $47M with which to work. Not bad. Strasburg’s new contract will take $5M away from that flexibility (he made $10M last year, will make $15M next) and arbitration raises for Harper, Rendon and Roark will cost some cash, but that’s a post for another day. Lets call it $30M in available FA dollars when all is said and done.

So, assuming you’re even reading this far and havn’t already started commenting and arguing about that list of players, here’s the presumed holes that losing these 10 players leaves (in order of mention above):

Closer

Starting Catcher

Backup Utility Infielder

Backup RH bench bat/corner outfielder

6th/7th inning RH reliever

Loogy

Long Man/Spot starter/7th guy out of the pen

Backup Outfielder (CF capable)

Another 6th/7th inning RH reliever

#5 Starter

Starting Shortstop

(and not really counting the “loss” of Burnett and Latos for this discussion)

If we just filled these holes internally, what would it look like?

Closer: Make Shawn Kelley the closer and move up Treinen and Glover to be 8th inning guys. This leaves a hole later on in the pen for the middle RH relievers (see below)

Starting Catcher: promote Lobaton to starter and install Severino as the backup. Or switch them; honestly I like Severino’s at-bats; he looks confident. I don’t think Kieboom is ready for the show, so it makes sense to tender Lobaton for one more year.

Backup Utility Infielder: Difo becomes the first go-to guy to backup Turner/Murphy, but we’ll still need another utility guy.

Backup RH bench bat/corner outfielder: not much internally to go to; both the 2016 AAA and AA rosters are basically bereft of decent hitting prospects who might be candidates. We’ll be trolling the FA market here for sure. See the next section.

Two 6th/7th inning RH relievers: We have Gott and Martin on the 40-man; they could step up to replace these two guys like for like. Right now we have five RH relievers under contract for 2017 (Kelley, Treinen, Glover, Gott and Martin) to go along with two lefties (Solis and Perez); that’s not too bad of a bullpen to start out with, but could be improved. And this lineup doesn’t “really” have a long man, so you’d have to think one of Gott or Martin is in AAA to make room for a long-man (likely Martin at this point).

Loogy: its arguable whether we need another lefty with both Solis and Perez under contract, but they went most of the year this year with three. Matt Grace is still on the 40-man and would be an internal option.

Long Man/Spot starter/7th guy out of the pen: loser of #5 starter competition (see below)

Backup Outfielder (CF capable): Michael Taylor, in what likely is his ceiling from here forward.

#5 Starter: have Sprint Training 2017 tryouts for the #5 starter between Lopez, Giolito, Cole and even Voth (who I’m assuming by that time will be on the 40-man, protected ahead of this coming off-season’s Rule-5 draft). The winner is #5 starter, and one of the losers could be the long-man (well, if the loser is someone like Cole or Voth, who aren’t nearly as “big” of a prospect as Giolito). There’s also the distinct possibility that Lopez’s arm is turned into a closer at some point if he can’t turn over lineups. Check out Lopez’s 2016 splits, specifically SP versus RP and specifically the “Times Facing an Opponent” during the game; as a starter he struggles with the first time through the order, but not as a reliever.

And we’re missing one-two spots that don’t really have natural in-house replacements: another backup infielder and a starting Center fielder.

So, looking at that 25-man roster, where do we see areas of need? This feeds directly into the Off-season Priorities in the next section.

Quick diversion: Notice I didn’t say what position Bryce Harper is playing. Honestly, if Turner is vacating CF and we’re waving good-bye to Espinosa, then I think you have to put Harper in center. Here’s my main arguments for putting him in center (most of which are “anti-arguments” for those who for some reason think he cannot play center):

He’s young. He just turned 24 for crying out loud; there’s no reason he doesn’t have the youth or athleticism to handle center. Mantle did it while hitting for power. So did Mays. So did Griffey Jr and Aaron for the early part of his career. Trout plays center.

He’s got the arm (he has the 2nd best statistically rated arm in the majors in 2016), he’s got the speed (21 Stolen bases this year). And now he has years of OF experience on which to depend.

He’s played there before and played well. Here’s his career fielding stats from fangraphs.com: He had more than 700 innings in CF in 2012 and played it to a fantastic UZR/150 figure of 19.1 and 13 DRS. He was also great there in more limited sample sizes in 2013 and 2015. I leave out 2014 since that was his injury season and its clearly skewed as compared to his other seasons.

By putting Harper in Center, you vastly open open up the roster possibilities on the FA market. Look at the pending FA last at mlbtraderumors.com and compare/contrast the available options at CF versus LF/RF.

Top FA/Trade Priorities in 2016-2017 Off-season

Fantasy: I view these as not really possible but are listed as “fantasy” wish lists. Both fixate on moving unmovable contracts, so they’ll probably remain fantasies.

Upgrade 1B: dump Zimmerman and upgrade offensively at that position.

Upgrade LF: dump Werth and the last year of his deal and find a LF-capable bopper.

Acquire a leading CF: back up the farm system and dump it out for a leading center fielder. Charlie Blackmon or Andrew McCutchen are names often mentioned thanks to the precarious position their teams face. Mike Trout is the funny name you also hear since he’s so good he’s virtually untrade-able. Unlike Tom Boswell, and as discussed in comments here before, re-signing Ian Desmond to man CF poorly would not be my first choice either. I’d rather go with my “Bryce to Center” plan as laid out above.

Reality

Corner Outfielder. See above Harper->CF logic. If you want to splurge (and hurt your #1 divisional rival) sign Yoenis Cespedes. Or you could make a big splash and sign Jose Bautista to a 3-yr deal that ends the same time Harper hits FA. Werth remains serviceable in left, where he is mitigated defensively while Bautista still has value in RF. This is where I could see a big chunk of the $30M of FA dollars going. Lord knows we could use another clutch hitter in the middle of the order.

Closer: Above I said i’d love to re-sign Melancon, but more and more it seems like he’s going to be the 4th prize in a 4-closer musical chairs race. And he’s gonna get paid. And I’m not sure that the Nats are going to pay him. Per the same previously mentioned FA list there’s 5 “active” closers hitting FA: Melancon, Wade Davis, Aroldis Chapman, Kenley Jansen and Sergio Romo There’s a whole slew of guys who are FA who are former closers though, names like Andrew Bailey, Joaquin Benoit, Santiago Casilla, Neftali Feliz, Jason Grilli, Greg Holland, J.J. Hoover, Jonathan Papelbon (haha, just making sure you’re still reading), Joe Smith, Fernando Salas, and Brad Ziegler. There’s probably even more frankly; these were just the ones who stood out as I read the list. Now, i’m not saying most of these guys are legitimate options, but some of these guys were perfectly good as closers and got “layered” by better closers. Take Ziegler for example: he was just fine for Arizona for a while, then got moved to Boston where he got demoted to 8th inning duties. I’d take him as a late-innings bullpen option.

Bullpen arm: middle reliever: Now, all that being said about Closers, I think maybe what the team does is install one of their existing options as “the closer” and then maybe hire one of these former closers to be an 8th inning/emergency closer kind of guy. That’s essentially what they got last year with Shawn Kelley and that’s worked out ok. I’d go after some of the ex-closer guys listed above, try to get them on an affordable deal (like halfway to closer money maybe) and that’d help off-set the losses of Melancon and Belisle.

Veteran utility infielder: as noted above, there’s not much in the farm system here. If you keep Espinosa and put him in this role, then this is moot .. but we’ve read over and again about his disposition when he’s not playing. This is kind of why I think we need to move him. He’s more valuable in trade than he is in this bench role. I hope the team re-ups with Stephen Drew honestly; he was solid, can cover all infield positions as needed, and can probably be had for a similar deal as last year. I’d be happy with Difo and Drew and wouldn’t be opposed to perhaps another veteran utility guy to pair with Drew and compete with Difo if we don’t think Difo is up to the task.

Less Likely:

Backup LF/IB bench bats: While I like Robinson and I think Heisey did a good job this year, one struggled and the other is a FA with no guarantee of returning. I absolutely expect to see another spring training cattle call of veteran bats of the LF/1B type to compete for roster spots. I’m appreciative of Goodwin‘s completely unexpected line at the plate upon his call up; do we think he’s a better lefty bat option off the bench than Robinson? I’m not sure. I also sense (based on anecdotal evidence read over the years) that Robinson is a clubhouse and teammate favorite, which might make it tougher to cut him when the time comes. Especially with a player’s manager type like Dusty Baker. I know this is where MartyC will cry about Matt Skole (likely to depart in MLFA this coming off-season) and I understand; its all about potential versus production and Skole never produced enough during these annual spring training “tryouts” to win his spot.

Catcher: Here’s where the most arguing may occur. I’m of the belief, after watching Severino down the stretch, that he could slide right into the starting spot right now. I thought he looked good at the plate, took confident at-bats, never looked over matched, and (here’s the kicker) *puts the ball in play!* This lineup has too many strikeouts; Severino struck out just 3 times in his 34 PAs down the stretch. That correlates to about 50 punch-outs over a 600-plate appearance season; that’s awesome. He was known for years for his defense, not his bat, so if he can provide even competent ABs he could be a starter. So i’m up for saving money on the FA market (where the catcher ranks are thin and the prices will get bid up badly as a result). Now, I could absolutely see us re-signing Wilson Ramos to an incentive-laden deal to keep him in house and hopefully get a good second half out of him. Why not? If he signs for $5-6M (basically his salary this year) and then has games played incentives that could take him up to $7 or $8M why wouldn’t he do that here instead of elsewhere? We go into the season with Severino and Lobaton with Kieboom in AAA and when Ramos shows up we (finally?) cut bait on Lobaton and have the two remaining guys platoon. I’d be onboard with that plan.

Loogy: Why spend money here? Solis and Perez ably fill the need. Do we need a third lefty in the pen at the expense of one of the aforementioned righties? I liked Rzepczynski this year; would he re-sign for reasonable dollars? Would you want him back? There’s several interesting names on the FA list; maybe one of them can be had for cheap.

What can we get in Trade versus buying on the FA market? Payroll implications?

I suspect that Gonzalez can fetch some seriously valuable resources. He’s an innings eating 4th starter who probably thrives in a pitcher’s park and is significantly less expensive at $12M/year than what something comparable costs on the FA market this year. So can he fetch maybe one MLB-ready player that fits a need above plus maybe one decent prospect? Is that too much?

Espinosa probably fetches less, unless you can get a GM to fall in love with his power/defense combo and somehow miss his BA and his K rate. By way of comparison, Yunel Escobar (a lesser defender with less power but more contact) fetched us two upper-level pitching prospects in Trevor Gott and Michael Brady (by upper-level I mean AA/AAA level, not top 100 prospects). I’d guess that Espinosa could fetch a bit more since he plays a premium position. So that could end up being more of the needs above plus maybe an additional prospect.

But who knows what we can and cannot get. In Mike Rizzo we trust when it comes to trades; no matter how much we bitch about prospects heading out the door, you’re really hard pressed to find a trade where Rizzo got the short end of the bargain or “lost” the deal. So lets see what he can do.

Payroll implications. I think we could get a $20M/yr corner OF slugger, a former closer at like $6M/year, resign Ramos at $5M, find a utility infielder in the Drew $3M/year range, and then sign a couple of guys to $1.25M conditional deals like what Belisle and Heisey got and fit right into the $145M payroll budget, even after arbitration raises.

Well; that’s a lot to argue about. Maybe I should have split this up. But let the discussions begin!

(Standard disclaimer; this is ranting about my fake baseball team. If you don’t play fantasy, might as well skip this).

I’m really beginning to question my abilities in fantasy sports. Despite being deep into baseball and knowing random things off the top of my head that should be of use in fantasy (which managers are more inclined to do closer by committee, which ball parks are skewed offensively and thus players who play there may be at an advantage), I struggle year after year.

This year, thanks to an unfortunately timed meltdown (I lost a week 0-10-2 after having been ahead early in the week), I dropped just out of the playoff spots in my league (top 6 make the playoffs out of a 12 team league). But the ills of my team were seen early. Once again, I was plagued by under performing players and a poor draft that left me churning the waiver wire. By the end of the season I had made 58 of the 65 allotted moves in a failed attempt to improve enough to sneak into the playoffs (where honestly, I would have been a tough out; I can grind out 6-5-1 wins with the best of them).

So, what happened? Here’s a link to the post talking about my initially drafted team. And here’s a matrix of my 21 initially drafted players, their performance on the year and a note indicating whether or not they over- or under-achieved (bold means on the team at year’s end, red = badly under performed, green = greatly over-performed).

Player

round Drafted/# Drafted overall

Yahoo o-rank 2013

Yahoo O-rank 2014

ADP at time of draft

2014 Perf Rank

Adam Jones-OF

1st round (#10 overall)

7

13

10th/11.4

21

Adrian Beltre-3B

2nd round (#15)

15

12

13th/13.2

46

Alex Rios-OF

3rd round (#34)

25

44

34th/35

179

Giancarlo Stanton-OF

4th round (#39)

222

26

24th/27.8

5

Kenly Janssen-RP

5th round (#58)

52

48

49th/53.2

102

Greg Holland-RP

6th round (#63)

36

63

62nd/62

60

Mark Trumbo-1B/OF

7th round (#82)

66

78

53rd/56.0

944

Carlos Santana-C/1B

8th round (#87)

134

87

69th/74.0

159

Shelby Miller-SP

9th round (#106)

76

88

110th/113.0

485

Hyung-Jin Ryu-SP

10th round (#111)

85

101

124th/127.2

95

Aaron Hill-2B

11th round (#130)

402

111

124th/115.8

364

Danny Salazar-SP

12th round (#135)

336

96

154th/150.4

355

Tony Cingrani-SP

13th round (#154)

152

133

156th/156.8

941

Jim Henderson-RP

14th round (#159)

130

155

170th/175.0

750

Shane Victorino-OF

15th round (#178)

67

113

125th/129.0

1144

Chris Archer-SP

16th round (#183)

175

171

208th/209.0

314

Asdrubal Cabrera-SS

17th round (#202)

267

151

171st/177.4

177

J.J. Hoover-RP

18th round (#207)

237

629

344th

922

Tim Hudson-SP

19th round (#226)

299

300

311th

171

Brandon Belt-1B

20th round (#231)

106

104

142th

988

Jake Odorizzi-SP

21st round (#250)

548

358

445th

197

So, what happened?

My first two picks didn’t underperform “badly,” but were not the super stars you need to take hold of a league. I didn’t really like Adam Jones or Adrian Beltre at the draft, and despite some hot streaks they’ve been disappointments. Beltre got hurt in camp and missed games at the beginning of the season. My #3 pick Alex Rios I finally gave up on and waived; his seasonal rank of 179 belies what he’s done the last two months (closer to the 900 ranked range). It’s never a good sign when your #3 pick gets waived thanks to performance (and not injury) reasons.

Giancarlo Stanton is my one major “win” out of the draft; a 4th round pick who likely will finish in the top 5 of stats on the season. At the time of this writing, he was trailing only Mike Trout in terms of fantasy rankings for offensive players. He single-handedly carried my team offensively for weeks on end and is a large reason that my team offense was 1st in homers and 3rd in RBI. I feel vindicated here: I suffered through at least two injury-riddled Stanton seasons in the past after having drafted him highly, and he’ll have the same issue next year; he’ll likely be a top-5 pick with a huge injury risk on his head.

My two big-time closers did not disappoint: both Janssen and Holland performed as expected and led me to be 5th in team saves and have a 14-7-1 record in the category on the year. This is a big lesson learned for me; you can get by with just two big-time closers and be successful in this category. Of course, I wanted more closers but got unlucky; my #3 closer Jim Henderson suddenly and without warning was yanked from the role on opening day. Another team vultured his replacement (Francisco “K-rod” Rodriguez); all he’s done is pitch lights out all year and is 6th in the league in saves. That should have been my 3rd closer. That was a disappointment. I tried just one waiver-wire closer grab (Chad Qualls for Houston) and despite picking correctly, Qualls went weeks without save opportunities so I dumped him after two weeks looking for more starter quality.

Lets talk about the god-awful positional player issues I had in the draft: Mark Trumbo started out white-hot, fractured his foot and missed months. Aaron Hill did not come closer to living up to the hype of fantasy analysts. Shane Victorino was on and off the D/L all year. And poor Brandon Belt fractured his thumb, fought his way back and then got hit in the head during BP and still remains on the concussion D/L.

Of the Starting Pitchers I gambled on: Shelby Miller struggled all year, Danny Salazar got demoted, as did Tony Cingrani. Chris Archer did not produce at fantasy levels and Jake Odorizzi struggled early and was dropped (I eventually picked him back up). I only kept two drafted starters on the team all year (Ryu and Hudson) and frankly Hudson was so bad for so long that I came pretty close to dumping him. That basically means that my “wait on starters” strategy was a complete failure, if I’m only keeping ONE decent starter the whole year.

So, for the 2nd straight year I cycled the waiver wires. Here’s some of the guys I went through:

Scheppers I took a gamble on b/c his numbers were so good as a reliever; mistake. He got shelled opening day and soon was on the D/L. A number of these pitchers were decent moves and pitched well for a while (especially Josh Beckett and Marcus Strohman). The biggest failure here was dumping Corey Kluber after he got hit hard opening day: He’s turned into the 16th best fantasy performer all year, a 2nd round talent. That was a huge mistake. I liked Eovaldi‘s peripherals (lots of Ks) but he struggled with runners and his ERA/WHIP were inflated all year. Skaggs got hurt, Kennedy was ineffective. I got great value for a while out of Keuchel, but after a good mid-summer he tailed off badly. Garcia made like one start before returning to the D/L. Josh Beckett was a great waiver wire pickup for a while, but he too got hurt and remains on the D/L today. Alex Wood was a great find. I snaked Gerrit Cole off the D/L just before he came back on but he contributed little. Most of my other experiments were far too inconsistent week-to-week to trust (see Trevor Bauer, Despaigne, Mike Leake, etc).

As mentioned before, I only tried to gamble on one closer waiver wire pickup thanks to the solid two starters that I had from draft day. Most of the available closers on the waiver wire were in committee situations and couldn’t be trusted anyway.

I worked 1B, 2B, and 3B hard. At one point I was trying to engineer a 3B trade, having Seager while he was hot and Arenado after he came off the D/L. But my potential trade partners badly low-balled me for Beltre (offering guys who were worth far less than Beltre was) and suddenly Seager dropped off a cliff, making his trade value useless. Eventually I dumped both.

1B pickups Napoli, Duda and especially Carter turned out to be huge winners. Once again proving my point that some positions are just so deep they’re not worth drafting. Same with outfielders to a certain extent; I had Ozuna all year and he’s turned out to be well worth it.

My season’s end Fantasy team after all this waiver wire churning. Bold are original, red are waiver wire:

You only need two big-time closers to compete. Spend draft picks in the 5th and 6th rounds, try to get a third closer later on and you’ll do fine. You must do a better job on the waiver wire though trying to grab closers if you want them.

There’s always 1B talent on waivers. Do not over-spend on 1B.

My strategy of over-loading on mediocre starters just doesn’t seem to be working. I was 3rd in wins and 5th in Ks, but 8th in ERA, dead last in losses and 11th in whip. Meanwhile the #1 team this year went with an uber-pitching strategy (over-drafting starters and ending up with Kershaw, Sale, Felix Hernandez as well as several top closers) and he just dominated pitching. Despite having a ton of starters, he managed to be 4th in Wins AND be 2nd in Whip. I think he’s got a good strategy. And i’m sure people will try to emulate it next year.

Do not sweat churning and burning waiver wire picks early on; you may just end up with a monster surprise player on the year. This was the 1st place team’s strategy and it netted him Charlie Blackmon and a couple of extra closers. Two of the top 10 starters on the year were waiver wire guys: CoreyKluber and Garrett Richard.

Do not hesitate grabbing big-name call-ups. I missed out on more than a couple guys that I would have grabbed but hesitated. This cost me last year with Yasiel Puig and it cost me this year with Jorge Soler and George Springer. I waited, and I missed out.